Rush: Trayvon not a race case

Rush Limbaugh blasted President Barack Obama on his radio show Monday for saying that if he had a son, “he’d look like Trayvon [Martin],” accusing the president of seizing on the shooting of the unarmed African-American teenager last month as a “political opportunity.”

“It is the least important thing, what the kid looks like. This poor kid was shot and the President of the United States only public reaction [was] ‘Mind you, if I had a son he’d look like that’? For what purpose does one say that? And what must you be thinking about this situation to think that and then say it?” the conservative radio host said.

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Limbaugh spent a portion of the first hour of his afternoon program reading from an article published on the National Review website Monday by Jay Nordlinger, who wrote, “What if the victim had been of Chinese ancestry, or a freckly red-headed Irish-American kid, or a kinky-haired Jewish piano student? So?”

Nordlinger continued, “What is wrong with people? Do we really serve the god of biology? What Barack Obama’s offspring would look like: Isn’t that the least important thing about the Trayvon Martin case?”

Agreeing with the arguments made in Nordlinger’s piece, Limbaugh said on the air that he, too, does not understand why Obama made a reference to Martin’s skin color when he addressed the shooting at a press conference last week. The incident has become a national controversy, infuriating many in the African American community who believe that Martin was killed as a result of racial profiling.

George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who fatally shot Martin, claimed he shot the unarmed teenager in self-defense. Zimmerman has not been arrested because of a Florida law called “Stand Your Ground” that has come under renewed scrutiny in light of Martin’s death, because it allows an individual to the use deadly force against another if they believe their life is in danger.

“When this young kid gets shot in Sanford, Fla., the reaction is ‘If I had a son, he would look like me’?” Limbaugh said. “Sorry, the last thing that ever occurs to me when somebody gets shot, when somebody’s murdered, the last thing is that they look like me. It doesn’t compute. But, the left they see things like this purely as surface matters.”

He added, “Here you have the death of an American citizen that seems a political opportunity. There’s no humanity in that. There’s no compassion in that. It’s just … very sad.”

Limbaugh also hit Obama for “not saying anything when a group of citizens issues a bounty for another citizen,” referring to the $10,000 bounty that the New Black Panther Party has offered for the capture of Zimmerman.

“Where is the president on this?” he said. “I would think that somebody in authority would try to do something to calm this down. I know the president’s in North Korea, but he could still say something about this and when he doesn’t say anything about it, we’re left to question — why?”